Building a modern alternative of the classic AC Cobra, progress so far...

Overview

This blog is intended to document the build of my Gardner Douglas Mk4 Cobra; partly as IVA evidence, bit primarily to help others learn from my mistakes and/or successes.

I will endeavour to post as often as possible, with a view to entering a single post for a particular element of the build process, however inevitably some things may not be completed in one go. All posts will be tagged so it should be easy enough to find the information you seek.

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Saturday, 9 April 2016

Front wiring loom

The front loom has been a bit of a puzzle, especially within the cockpit area. I started by identifying and labelling the various parts of the loom using a combination of GDs wiring diagrams and the written instructions. Although this isn't difficult, it is time consuming but definitely time well spent and it certainly helped make sense of how it would be routed.

The standard GD method routes the front part of the loom out in to the engine bay through a 44mm grommet with the engine loom connectors, it then goes under the lip of the bonnet opening. I want to keep the engine bay as tidy as possible so I altered this slightly.

I pulled the front part of the loom (lights, radiator fan and horn) back through the big grommet leaving just the two engine loom plugs and the earth leads to go through the grommet. I then drilled a 20mm hole above and right of the heater ducts (looking forward) and routed the front part of the loom through the wheel arch compartment before going through the inner wing and appearing under the lip in the engine bay.

The loom then splits adjacent to the bonnet hinge; headlights/indicator/side repeater back through the nearside inner wing to the left and the rest to right under the nose cone and through the offside inner wing. The horn lead sits on the engine bay side of the nearside inner wing and the radiator fan cable hangs down in the middle under the nose cone.

Within the cockpit the relays have been mounted upside down in the nearside footwell and the heater fan & battery cable fed through the same hole as the front part of the loom in to the nearside wheel arch compartment.

Grommets have been used where the loom passes through bulkheads and it's all held in place with P-clips.

Relay block fitted with self tappers, just spotted that it's not level so adjustments necessary

Nearside wheel arch. Head and side light cables to the left, side repeater cable going from left to right

Loom along inner nearside wing

Loom across nose cone, the cable dangling down is for the radiator fan